Morning Song – We Are Alive

November 10, 2016

Bruce Springsteen’s “We Are Alive” is a dense and subtle song. If you’re reading this post, then it’s literally true for you today. We are alive; it’s another day (and a lovely one in this little corner of the world); the bed last night was not our grave.

On the other hand, it’s literally not true for the spirits Springsteen narrates. Those 10 Baltimore railroad strikers killed by the state militia in the summer of 1877 are still dead, and it would be another 60 years before labor rights were enshrined in federal law. Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley never finished putting on their church choir robes that Sunday morning in Birmingham, Alabama. And hundreds of people continue to die crossing the Arizona desert.

Finally, the article of faith, the cosmic bet, in “We Are Alive” is, as a former pastor used to say, “When you’re down to nothing, God is up to something“. What’s more, that there’s help available from those who have gone before you in the struggle. (So use it.)